Hoover Platinum Linx hand vac - anybody have one?

I have the Hoover Platinum Linx stick vac. I like the 18v of power. The hand vac has the same battery and charger making it interchangeable. Anybody have the Hoover Platinum series Linx hand vac? Good/bad/ok? Pros/cons? I've read reviews online and like the stick vac, they were mixed. It's expensive at $129.99, but if it's worth it I might be able to swing it.

I am interested in hearing about it though from people with cats (who have to deal with an endless supply of cat hair no matter how much you brush like Ollie provides me with).

It's probably just me, but I pretty much think most hand vacs are next to useless.

I have the cheapest Dust Buster you can get (it was about $15 when I bought it 4 years ago). It's more than paid for itself. But I mainly use it on spills, the pile from sweeping up, and cleaning up the cat food the cats fling out around their dishes. Cleaning up cat hair is for the big vacuum. I've used a Swiffer dry a couple times, but prefer vacuuming. I looked into a stick vac a while ago, but none of them would be any easier than my big vacuum (it's a Eureka The Boss SmartVac 4870) and most cost much more or the same as the vacuum I already had.

I have an inexpensive rechargable hand vac (about $25) and I use it for sweeping up litter that gets kicked out of the box and food that the cats fling out of the dishes or big clumps of dirt. Otherwise, it's not much good. I have to get out my big vac (I have two, a Hoover Nanolite and a Bissel something-or-other) to actually get cat hair out of the carpets and off of the furniture. I've never seen a hand vac that was powerful enough to actually get the cat hair off of the furniture (and Bamf sheds ALL the time... even though I brush him all the time). I just use the hose attachment.

Wish I had more advice.

I've never seen a hand vac that was powerful enough to actually get the cat hair off of the furniture

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That's why I'm interested in this one. I don't think I've ever seen an 18v hand vac before. That's double the power of the Black and Decker hand vac I have right now.

It's got a brush attachment that would be like the attachment on my Hoover Fold Away without the short little hose to deal with.

The Fold Away I like for my bedroom carpet, but the Hoover Linx Stick Vac is what works best on the laminate wood floor. I was hoping to get something cordless to get fur everywhere the Stick Vac can't get to.

My only experience with battery operated vacs is that they don't work well at all for cat hair. I don't know about the specific one you're considering.

Just wondering how your new apartment is working out?

Originally Posted by GoldyCat

My only experience with battery operated vacs is that they don't work well at all for cat hair. I don't know about the specific one you're considering.

Just wondering how your new apartment is working out?

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Good. I just need to finish putting away some stuff, but it seems fine. I've furnished it and all. I just need a few more items like a printer and a coat rack, but otherwise I've gotten all the big stuff done. I have no view of anything except the apartment courtyard, which is kind of a drag, but at the time I rented, it was the only unit available that would fit the bill of what I was looking for and what was within my budget. Other apartment complexes had problems like no parking or being above something very noisy. The view I can deal with though.

Cleaning up is a bit of an issue here because Ally and Ollie are shedding much more up here than in Florida. I'm thinking it's due to the climate. Brushing doesn't seem to help. All I can really do is vacuum and dust daily. Ollie is happy but he's started going through his teenager phase and is setting up his boundaries. Ally just finished her teenager phase it seems because she's more affectionate than she's been in 2 months.

My neighbors seem ok. Lots of dogs and cats in the building from what I can tell. Ally and Ollie stare at the cat in the window across from my apartment.

The biggest problem is that there is no grocery store within walking distance. That should be fixed in a month as a little grocery/deli is opening in the downstairs retail space of my apt complex.

So, things seem fine. I won't really know 100% until it gets frigid. Then I get to find out how the insulation is. Fortunately I have a fireplace and an a/c with heating.

Oh yeah, one other minor problem. The complex has everybody's a/c air handler in a locked room within their apt. They don't let people change their own a/c filter. Mine is in my bedroom. So there is this locked door that only the maintenance people can get into. That annoys me because I like to change the filter often, but I can't with the way it's set up. It also annoys me because the maintenance people have a key to the apt and just come in to do stuff as they want. I was pretty clear that I want them to only come in when I'm present and that I'm happy to schedule maintenance, but the other day I came home to find a slip on the kitchen counter that maintenance had come in to check something.

We lived in a complex with similar policies for several years. See if you can contact them about changing the filter more often with the one you want. The ones that complex supplied only filtered out boulders. You could see through the filter! I like 3M Filtrete filters for allergy sufferers.

I got the Linx hand vac. I'm not overly impressed. It's not necessarily bad, it's just not what I was hoping for. The biggest problem stems from the fact that I couldn't find a single place in the twin cities that had any of these units in stock for me to see. Had I found a place, I could have seen that the brush attachment is much smaller than it seems in photos. Size aside, the other big problem is that the brush tool is part of the crevice tool, and slides into place. It only takes a tiny amount of pressure on the brush for it to retract, basically switching back to the crevice tool only, without the brush. This basically renders the brush tool entirely useless, which is a huge issue for me.

The only reason I'm keeping it is because it came with the same battery and charger that my stick vac uses. The battery only lasts about 15 minutes (less if I turn the beater on), so a second was on my short list of things to get. The battery and charger bought separately cost about the same as the hand vac did. So, I'll keep it.

In the meantime, I'm back to searching for something cordless that will suck up pet hair and not damage wood furniture.